I've been hearing a lot of horror stories about travel today. I was enormously lucky. Despite the fact that Dublin Airport and Heathrow were both fully operational, Aer Lingus cancelled almost all of their flights from London to Ireland. There were lads coming back from the US and Australia for Christmas stuck at the airport and, by all accounts, the situation in Dublin was even worse. Fortunately, i was flying BMI and got away with only a bit of a delay. Aside from a brief suspension when a light aircraft jack-knifed on the runway, it sounds like there wasn't a great deal wrong with things on this side - the problem, apparently, is that Aer Lingus haven't been de-icing their planes. There's some dispute as to whether it's up to the airline or the airport and nothing is moving. The airport was deserted by the time i got there - i guess everyone was told to go home and forget about flying.

I flew out the UK last year and it was the airport doing the de-icing - airlines don't travel with a tech crew to de-ice! You need to de-ice at both ends so obviously Heathrow airport would've had to do the de-icing. BMI fly smaller propeller planes that I don't think need de-icing or at least not such an intensive job as the Airbus jets.

quote:

The roads were pretty nasty on the way up to Offaly, but i got here in the end.

You'd figure Biffo Cowen would've had his whole constituency county cleared and clean as a whistle as well as having a freshly cooked turkey on everyone's doorstep!

The planes would have been ok out of Heathrow but they were all stuck at Aer Lingus' Dublin hub.Coming in, you could see them all lined up up on the tarmac - apparently having been there all day. It seems that a few long-haul ones got out but most of the short-haul ones were suspended. BMI use Airbuses too and didn't seem to have many problems.I've no doubt that Heathrow would have been chaos had it snowed again though. It sounds like everyone's blaming each other at the moment.

Funnily enough, the closer you get to Offaly, the better the roads get. The motorway around Dublin was horrendous - it's clear that they have put a lot of salt and grit down but it's just turned into a wet, slushy mess. The traffic was crawling along at 15mph.

The Irish political system looks more and more pathetic with each passing day.

_____________________________

You're in the basement because they're afraid of you, of your relentlessness and because they know that they could drop you in the middle of the desert, and tell you the truth is out there, and you'd ask them for a shovel!

The Irish political system looks more and more pathetic with each passing day.

Me, you and Vincent Browne agree!

Does it bother anyone that the councils call us "customers"? Head over the sea to Glasgow and the people there are referred to as residents and at that they pay a local council tax with a water tax added on to their bill.

It's not just the system for electing the stupid white men that's pathetic it's the wholesale adoption of an ideology that puts consumers ahead of citizens.

We're back to the having the trolley A&E crisis in the headlines again too... It doesn't feel like we've anything to be proud of.

Yeah, very sad alright. So young and only starting her married life. It was a bit confusing at first, re what happened, but it's clearer now.

So, there's all sorts of talk about Cowen today, I'm taking it with a healthy pinch of salt. After all, this is FF. More generally, how is it that in the US and the UK politicians are investigated and can be put in prison, whereas here they get a pension, golden parachute or a pat on the head?

_____________________________

You're in the basement because they're afraid of you, of your relentlessness and because they know that they could drop you in the middle of the desert, and tell you the truth is out there, and you'd ask them for a shovel!

Yeah, very sad alright. So young and only starting her married life. It was a bit confusing at first, re what happened, but it's clearer now.

So, there's all sorts of talk about Cowen today, I'm taking it with a healthy pinch of salt. After all, this is FF. More generally, how is it that in the US and the UK politicians are investigated and can be put in prison, whereas here they get a pension, golden parachute or a pat on the head?

There is a very tight and cosey relationship between business and politics.

ONE OF Irelands most successful businessmen, Niall Fitzgerald, has told The Irish Times he did not feel that he could have pursued a business career in Ireland without compromising his personal principles.

To quote the writer there on something he's said a few times: Ireland is no more corrupt than anywhere else but it's just that you get away with it here. O'Toole's Ship of Fools is well worth a read if you're interested in how or why white collar crime is glossed over.

YEARS AGO, in the time of money, I interviewed the basketball player Magic Johnson in Los Angeles. Oddly, even then, access to the superstars of American sports was better than it is was to run-of-the-mill GAA players. Johnson sat for an hour-and-a-half after a game and chatted affably. Then we walked out of the deserted arena into the gloaming of the parking lot and chatted a little more. Thats not the point though.

Johnson had come back to play for the Lakers a few years after his diagnosis of being HIV positive. His announcement of his condition had caused considerable shock in the States. He had until then lead a charmed and happy life. Anybody who acquires the nickname Magic instead of the forename Earvin is blessed in that department. When the showtime era between the LA Lakers and the Boston Celtics was at its zenith it was Magic on the west coast, Larry Bird on the east coast and a world of marketing and partying opportunities in between.

Magic had partied, as the Americans call it, in a free and wholehearted manner. He had campaigned on the belief that every woman could do with a little magic in her life. Along the way he had contracted his condition.

By the time he came back to play for the Lakers his situation was more complicated. The shock and the sympathy had worn away in some people. As one American sportswriter said to me, if Magic didnt die of full blown Aids then he was going to die from being stoned by the Christian right. A previous comeback had been aborted because players complained of the risk of being on the same court as him.

In a world which makes no sense to anybody some people had decided that there were Aids victims who deserved their fate and there were those (crack babies and transfusion patients) who were innocent, and this latter group were the only ones who could have an expectation of compassion.

For his part, Magic Johnson had come to that place where he looked at death and was forced to decide what he would do with his life while he was dodging the final whistle. He chose basketball. He chose life. He chose to honour the gift he had been given and to honour those who took joy from it. That was his poem, his symphony, his song. His happiness.

There were those who felt that if Magic Johnson had died of Aids it would be a punishment worthy of his sins, a proof of some vindictive god giving a sinner what he deserved. And there was Magic Johnson in a parking lot at midnight talking about his realisation that life isnt about what anybody deserves, good or bad. God or no God. Its about what everybody owes. Its about finding ways to honour that debt to each other by giving the best of yourself. Its about contributing. That, he said, was happiness. I think of him a lot when on days like this we talk about perspective.

The death of a young person as vibrant and lovely as Michaela Harte will never make any sense. Nor can it, as we tritely say, put the joy of sport into some neat and shrunken perspective. No. It puts into perspective Nama and Anglo and Cowengate. It measures the futility of our dumb worries over mortgages and promotions and repayments. It frames for us the wanton stupidity of simple arguments, the fretting over mistakes and our serial failures to love each other and forgive each other.

Look back on this single lifetime granted to you and calculate how much time you have lost on those things and there is your regret. There is your perspective. Sport is on the other side of the ledger.

Michaela Harte, for those of us hacks who would encounter her at the dressingroom door after a triumph or a calamity for Tyrones footballers, was a happy, reassuring presence for the team in the room behind her. Some people, just by being themselves, become integral to the group around them.

We made jokes about her closeness with her Dad, the worlds first conjoined father and daughter. But we had an envy of their great pride in each other. We had the aching recognition that every man wants to be a hero to his daughter and we knew that few of us will ever truly be that. We saw that in this journey the two of them were making there was a trust and a love which genuinely put other things into perspective.

Other things except sport. Sport as a form of expression, an instrument for self-fulfilment and a source of communal happiness. They understood that. Anybody who truly believes that sport is trivial will never achieve greatness. You cant give that much to trivia. Ballygawley itself was once divided to its core in an argument over a summer league. What passion went into that long, long argument they had before Aireagal Chiarαin came into being! Mickey was at the centre of it and I suspect every time somebody said to Mickey to leave it be, that it was only football, he said to himself that if we cant get football right between us, if football cant be about the best of us, then what have we? The questions sport asks dont shape us. Our response exposes us for what we are. Over the years it has revealed for us Mickey Hartes character and, by extension, the character of those around him, those he chooses and respects.

None of us today can presume to know Mickey Hartes pain or that of the Harte and McAreavey families. Yet even if some of us are unable to share it, the faith which Mickey Harte and those close to him have shown over the past week is a grace which is beautiful and inspiring to see.

It puts paid to what has always seemed to me to be the trite closure in the matter of grief and mourning. There is only a dulling of the pain and then a couple of questions. How to keep on keeping on, how to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And how to honour and celebrate the life that has been lost.

Mickey Harte is a man to whom extraordinary gifts have been given and from whom great and unfair tolls have been taken. On this Monday morning, when he prepares to do one of the hardest things any man can ever be asked to do, the sense of feeling of compassion for him and for John McAreavey and for their families is as tangible and widespread as the weather on this island of ours.

On this desolate day it seems too early to think about summer, but when that season comes I hope Mickey Harte is on the sidelines again. He wont have healed, but he will be still writing his poem, he will still be the difference one life can make in the lives of others. And he will be doing the hardest thing, which is to keep on keeping on. Doing it in the best way.

Why is sport different? Nobody told Mozart and Salieri that music was trivial. Mozart spent the final, ailing months of his life trying to complete his Requiem Mass in D Minor. Salieri, according to legend, spent the months after Mozarts passing wondering how to steal it. Nobody said to them that this thing of beauty was trivial and that death should have given them perspective.

If you had what Magic Johnson had, if you had what, for all you knew, was a slender lease on life, a few more months or years, what would you do? Magic went back to his gift, and I know what Paul McGirr and Cormac McAnallen and Michaela Harte would do. They would immerse themselves in the lyric joy of the game and theyd stop sweating about the small stuff.

And if Mickey can keep going, keep drawing the fulfilment out of others, if he can keep giving  well, the good days will feel different and the bad days will feel worse. Yet the sun on his back and the song in the wind which only he can hear, those things will be the gifts from his two lost players and his lovely daughter. Theyll be cheering him on.

We all will.

_____________________________

I have no idea who any of them are, apart from Terry Pratchett who I know has got a beard and keeps going on about killing himself but never does.

You're in the basement because they're afraid of you, of your relentlessness and because they know that they could drop you in the middle of the desert, and tell you the truth is out there, and you'd ask them for a shovel!

What do ye think about the reform debate and the promises of jobs (from FG&Lab) and various reliefs being offered by FG?

I think a lot of the stuff about reform is a distraction from where they stand on real issues - health policies haven't really factored in to anything really and since jobs has been made the key agenda issue it appears that much canvassing being done is centered around this.

So, meet the new boss same as the old boss or eh something new to look forward to? It feels kinda like the day after the night before and the last few days of Fianna Fail annihilation has been a long overdue party. It should be interesting to see how few of Labour's policies get in to a prog. for govt. and how many jobs they can get for their boys & Joan.

The Sunday World has confirmed what pretty much everyone knew., The journo suspected of sex with a minor is Tom Humphries.

Unbelievable stuff.

Holy shit! I never heard that - presumably it's more than just rumours? Curious I didn't see it on the gaaboard.com, my usual source of info for scuttlebutt - might have been removed for legal reasons.

_____________________________

I've only gone and set up a blog! This week I've been mostly reviewing The Lego Movie and Wadjda. Click: The Fast Picture Show

It was everywhere last week. I first heard about it on Tuesday. It was confirmed that he was being investigated yesterday, obviously he is yet to be charged as he is currently in a physciatric unit due to an apparent suicide attempt but the SW ran it yesterday. At thsi stage it';s important to note that it is only an allegation, albeit one that has not been denied.

Most other papers have amde an editorial decision not to go to print just yet but I would imagine it will be everywhere this week...

_____________________________

I have no idea who any of them are, apart from Terry Pratchett who I know has got a beard and keeps going on about killing himself but never does.

bloody hell - i'm genuinely shocked. now that i think of it, i hadn't seen his column updated on the Irish Times site for a while. can't understand how i missed all reference to it - possibly working too hard. yes, that's it - working too hard.

_____________________________

I've only gone and set up a blog! This week I've been mostly reviewing The Lego Movie and Wadjda. Click: The Fast Picture Show

Twas a bit slow down by the quays, but nothing too bad. I found it really funny watching double deckers filled with gards going around. Dunno why, it just seemed rather humerous a load of them packed in a bus with high vis vests and hats on.

Friend of mine will be in lockdown in Phoenix Park today or tomorrow, can't remember when. But they have to be through the gate by 9am and can't leave until after 5.

I hope all goes well on all sides. Not just that there aren't any attacks or anything bad, but that the powers that be don't get too pissy if there are a few people exercising their freedom of speech.

Nothing major really, maybe 5 minutes later than I would usually be, like you said I can see 5 o' clock being a whole lot of fun. I'd usually drive into town but it's not worth the hassle so I'll be bussing it for the next week.

_____________________________

Currahee!

It's a different film. It's a very different film! It's a different shark!

If I were British (well most probably English) and I'd never visited Ireland but fancied going there cos its near, they speak English, they like a good drink and it sounds fun. I'd now be thinking bloody hell sounds dangerous, doesn't it.

If I were British (well most probably English) and I'd never visited Ireland but fancied going there cos its near, they speak English, they like a good drink and it sounds fun. I'd now be thinking bloody hell sounds dangerous, doesn't it.

As long as you weren't coming over in an official capacity, I'd say you'd be alright.

Two Fkn hours to get home yesterday because Dublin Bus didn't know where any of thier busses were. Nor did they have anyone on the streert to tell anyone where they put thier busses. Ended up getting a taxi home.

Did get to see to Eargi march, which was nice.....even if most of them needed a good wash.